Friday, January 14, 2011

Ion Audio is releasing the Book Saver, an e-reader conversion system for printed materials. According to the company, it's the "fastest and most convenient system for transferring novels, textbooks and periodicals to the digital realm."

As you can see in the video below, Book Saver has two cameras that take separate images in rapid succession of each page within an open book. Book Saver works very fast - it takes only one second per two pages according to the company, which means that to copy a 200-page book will take you about 15 minutes.

The Book Saver, which will be offered in a price of $149, is indeed a great way to digitize your library, but will readers have the time and energy to really use it, when they can digitize almost any book in their library by purchasing and downloading it in no effort and no time?

Let's take for example a beloved book on my shelf - Catch 22 by Joseph Heller. It has 464 pages, which means that using the Book Saver it will take me about 35 minutes to digitize the whole book, if I won't get tired and keep doing it at the same pace. On the other hand, I can go to Amazon Kindle store, pay $12.99 (for some reason the e-book cost more than the paperback..) and have it on my Kindle in one minute. In this case, I would say I would go for the second option and maybe spend an half hour reading it instead of storing it.

What would you do? Do you see yourself using the Book Saver or you rather just digitize your library by downloading it? We'll be happy to hear your thoughts.

ebooks vs. paper books:

Eco-Libris: Plant a tree for every book you read!

Founded in 2007, Eco-Libris is a green company working to green up the book industry in the digital age by promoting the adoption of green practices in the book industry, balancing out books by planting trees, and helping to make e-reading greener.

To achieve these goals Eco-Libris is working with book readers, publishers, authors, bookstores and others in the book industry worldwide. So far Eco-Libris balanced out over 179,500 books, which results in more than 200,000 new trees planted with its planting partners in developing countries.